June 27, 2007

My apologies for the lack of real content these last couple weeks. Cristian (everything really IS his fault) has absconded with my laptop, as he works feverishly on his plan to brainwash the youth of America into a mindless army ready to do his bidding on a major administrative project for his organization. Which he doesn’t mind, because no matter how much time it takes him, he doesn’t have to socialize a single middle schooler in the process. Someday I’ll tell you the story of the time a 12 year old girl said to him, “I’m not doing this stupid worksheet. I’m just going to drop out of school and get pregnant anyway.”

I have to say these kids do an excellent job wearing the gloss of parenthood off the paint job that is Cristian’s plan for the future.

Me, I’m running and swimming and biking like some sort of jock and let me say this – I figured out where the “Jocks are dumb” stereotype came from – it’s the low blood sugar! I’m confused and hungry at least 10 hours a day.

In closing, here is a cute video of a tiny dog that looks like a Panda.

June 19, 2007

There’s something to be said here about the decline of the radical left in the United States, and how much of that decline is due to the left being unable to change tactics, and how much of that decline is due to the general erosion of democracy in the US post 9/11, and maybe also something about the lack of viable alternatives to capitalism today, and while capitalism has proven to be much preferable to, say, forced communism, perhaps this lack of alternatives is also affecting resistance to the human and environmental explotations that are an inevitable result of capitalist enterprise and must be resisted, and resisted effectively, if we are to live in a just world. And how to resist effectively? How to resist effectively, that is the question. But I am not together enough to say it. Yet.

June 15, 2007

Well, for a little while I was in North Andover, Massachusetts, a lovely town whose reputation is besmirched only by whatever responsibility it has to bear for how Cristian turned out. Which – come on now, people, Cristian would have had to grown up with the Munchkins in Lollipopland to counteract the powerful, genetic components of his wicked, wicked personality.

(I’m entitled to say this because I discovered Cristian doing SuDoKu in HIS apartment last night with my favorite, precious, favorite pen, which I spent $15.00 on. $15.00! On a pen! A shameful act of bourgeois justified only by then treasuring said pen and never losing it, a pen which I have pointed out to him at least 500 times as my favorite, precious, favorite pen, a pen that should never, ever leave my apartment no matter how much he needed a pen, even if he was writing a will leaving everything, including his extensive bottlecap collection, to me, God forbid of course such a thing should ever happen, BUT if he felt the need he could either write the damn will at my house or use a Bic. But! His SuDoKu addiction got the best of him and he smuggled said pen out of my house, and while I am not holding this against the town of North Andover per se I do wonder if the Munchkins couldn’t have done a better job with him.)

We were in North Andover because Cristian’s lovely sister Kayla graduated from High School. Kayla is a doll, the kind of teenager that makes one want to have children, lots of them, because they’re so smart and funny and helpful and keep up with the newest music. And then I look out my car window and see a teenager skulking behind a bush smoking a cigarette, wearing one of those Happy Bunny t-shirts and remember, oh yeah, that’ll be the kind of teenager I’ll get. Hmmmm.

So I was going to write about that, and about how Cristian and I got stuck in Chicago for nine hours and then bumped to first class, where he asked me 50 billion times, “Are the drinks REALLY free? Really? They’re not going to give us some bill at the end of the flight, are they?” and also, as the Sad Sacks headed for coach filed by, “I wish I had a sign that said, I’m not rich, they just bumped me into first class,” which, honestly, would anyone ever feel better upon seeing such a sign when they’re headed for coach? People who had also been stuck in Chicago for many horrible, no-seats-left-in-the-airport hours?

But then my college announced it was closing and my will to live was sapped for the 8 billionth time in 29 years. Which averages out to 1,323,125times a day, if my math is right.

June 13, 2007

I’ve been very sad today, and then I went and decided the title of this post, which led me to look up Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen and DUDE,it turns out that few things are funnier, in a profoundly icky way, than the crazy white people singing this old slave spiritual on Youtube. Go ahead and look for yourself. Someone needs to write those people a letter, a letter that starts out with a WHAT THE SHIT and ends with a GET A CLUE, YOU CAN AFFORD ONE.

Or, maybe, just send them a text message: OMG YR WHITE!!

Anyway. Why so glum, you ask?

My alma mater, Antioch College, is closing. CLOSING. Perhaps to reopen in 2012. I don’t really have any words at this point. Antioch was a radical school, a radical community – it provided a unique, safe place to experience the end of adolescence, the beginning of adulthood. I wouldn’t be who I am if it wasn’t for Antioch.

June 6, 2007

Over the past 4 weeks, I have come to affectionately think of my thighs as hams. As in, “Come on, hams! Only 1 mile to go.” Or, “Man, I’ve got some tired hams here.”

When exhorting my hams gets old, I imagine that I am a powerful, beautiful walrus, flippering along the trail with force and majesty. I chant “Wal-RUS! Wal-RUS!” under my breath when I run up a really steep hill, or a regular hill, or an incline, or a wheelchair ramp. At the top of each hill, the walrus rejoices.

As soon as I get home from a run or a bike ride, I go straight to my bathroom mirror to admire my incredibly sweaty visage. “Dana,” I say to myself, “you look JUST like Lance Armstrong after he won his seventh Tour de France. Except sexier.”

June 5, 2007

I swear, I’m going to remember this, that anytime I want to TURN UP THE FREUDIAN VOLUME and really get to know all my different parts – id, ego, superego, lazyego, hungryego, thirstyego, timemanagementego – all I have to do is impersonate a jock and BAM! – there they are. Waiting. For me.

Running feels really, really good AFTER I’ve done it. Sometimes it feels good a mile or two in. But in the morning? When I have to get out of bed, put on my special Texas themed running socks and get out the door? My id and superego are both SCREAMING. Kicking and fighting. Like a pair of very compelling, lawyerly BABIES. It’s too hot, it’s too humid, I don’t want to go, I’m sore from yesterday, my time is going to be terrible, ohhh, I don’t want to do this, there’s nothing wrong with just staying in bed.

It happens while I’m exercising too. I’ll never make it up this hill, I’ll never make it up this hill, I’ll never make it up this hill.

Guess what? Thinking I’ll never make it up this hill does NOT make it any easier to get to the top of said hill. Ever.

When you come down to brass tacks, these are just clever variations on the basic mental message of I Can’t. At some point in my life, a large part of myself aquired a SuperQuitter attitude, and it really wants the rest of me to join it. On the couch.

There is a good side to INTERNAL CRITICPALOOZA O7. These voices I’m hearing are normally just background static. And they are really toxic. Hopefully I can move them, literally move them right out of my body, as I get stronger – as I keep with it. Keeping with it, I think, is much more important than actually getting stronger, although that will happen too.

I get up in the morning. I ignore the voices. I put on the socks. I go out the door. I Can’t becomes I Just Did – over, and over again.